Erin King has dominated coverage of this Irish team in recent months. Rightly so.
Named captain at the age of just 22, she is the new skipper to lead Ireland into this new age. A Lions tour (2027) and eventually a World Cup (2029) loom on the horizon. Clearly, the powers that be have decided that King is an authoritative leader and a marketable figure to boot.
It is a big show of faith in a player just seven games into her international career. For all the talk of King’s promise as an athlete, such a low number betrays the lack of knowledge we have of her skills at this level.
There have been snippets. The infamous pair of close-range tries when beating the Black Ferns in 2024. A viral moment from the Olympics when, in her best impression of “The Beast” Tendai Mtawarira, King kept Emily Lane (the starting scrumhalf for Saturday’s Six Nations opener, coincidentally) from landing on her head during a sevens lift.
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Thanks to a serious knee injury, King hasn’t played for Ireland in almost a year. The evidence of just seven caps – four starts, two of them in the Six Nations – can’t give us a full picture. Other than the pig collagen now in her surgically repaired knee (yep, that is what they did), what will Ireland’s new captain bring to Twickenham on Saturday?
Well for one, given the new job title, leadership is an obvious place to start. “Erin embodies the Ireland women’s rugby player,” said Scott Bemand during the Six Nations launch. She has so much enthusiasm for the game. She’s almost obsessive in how she goes about being better in every session.
“Erin came back off the World Cup, which unfortunately she was injured for, and she’s hit the ground running. She’s leading by example and we want to follow her. Hopefully that energy, that opportunity, that enthusiasm shines through and people get behind her.”
There’ll have to be that in spades come Saturday. The last two captains, Sam Monaghan and Edel McMahon, are out through injury. There is still experience around King, particularly in the forward pack. Hooker Clíodhna Moloney-MacDonald is set for a 50th cap, a mark tighthead Linda Djougang passed during last year’s World Cup.
In general play, perhaps unsurprisingly given her sevens background, King is an all-rounder. In defence and attack, she is a workhorse in the traditional duties of a backrow forward.
On her 15s debut back in 2024, she made nine carries in just half an hour of action off the bench. On her first two starts, against Canada and the USA in WXV 1 that same year, she kept her workload high with 16 and 18 tackles respectively. Both were either game highs or next best for Ireland. She also had her infamous two tries against the Black Ferns on the occasion of her second cap.
Fast-forward to the 2025 Six Nations. King started adding more attacking work. Aoife Wafer is consistently Ireland’s leading carrier whenever she plays, but against France (17 carries vs 11) and Italy (17 carries vs 13), King wasn’t too far behind. On the defensive side of the ball, King averaged 16 tackles per game – a very healthy number.
Arguably the point of particular interest is how she ranked in the top 10 for turnovers won (four) of all players in last year’s Six Nations. This despite only playing three games due to the knee injury which she picked up against England – she still completed 80 minutes in that match.
That point on turnovers adds a fascinating dynamic to the balance of Ireland’s backrow. To an extent, all of the starting trio this Saturday are hybrids, capable of performing of different roles depending on their shirt number on the day.
For all Wafer’s ability to jackal – she memorably won a pair of turnovers during the World Cup quarter-final – King would certainly be the closest Ireland have to an out-and-out openside. At that tournament in England, Edel McMahon was the designated seven, albeit she was struggling with injury throughout the tournament and failed to make the France match. King stepping up in her place gives Ireland that option of a defensive specialist while also adding more punch in the carry than the former captain.
Brittany Hogan is on the blindside flank on Saturday. In last year’s Six Nations, when lining out alongside King, Hogan took on more of the tackling workload. Wafer dominated the carry. King doing her bit on both sides with the ability to hover over the breakdown could well allow the other two to thrive in their desired areas.
At the World Cup, with King injured and McMahon playing on one leg, Ireland used Wafer at openside and a lock – Fiona Tuite – as a hybrid six. That certainly added to Ireland’s lineout. But this trio – Hogan, King and Wafer – is formed by all-rounders offering more mobility and dynamism around the park.
All of which presupposes King performs in a similar manner to what last year’s numbers show. After spending almost 12 months to the day in the physio room, new strengths could well have been added. In the Celtic Challenge final, King showed off the same power close to the try line to mimic the pair of tries that put her firmly on the radar in Vancouver 18 months ago.
For a player already anointed as a leader and future star, we have seen very little of King. That much, all going well, will change over the coming weeks. Time to build an already burgeoning reputation built on a small but impressive body of work.
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